Alan sat in silence for a moment. ‘I can’t think of anything else that wouldn’t be worse,’ he said.
‘Alan!’ said Carrie, as if he had betrayed her. Suddenly Frieda felt for the other woman. Patients very often talked to Frieda about their partners and about their family but she wasn’t used to meeting them, to getting involved.
She stood up, taking her trench coat from the back of the chair and putting it on. ‘You need to talk about it,’ she said.
‘We don’t need to talk about it,’ said Alan. ‘I’ll see you on Tuesday.’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’ll let myself out.’
Frieda closed the kitchen door on them and stood on the other side, feeling like a spy. She could hear the rise and fall of their voices. She couldn’t make out whether they were arguing. She peered more closely at the photographs of Alan and his parents. He was chubby and solemn and had the same anxious smile, the same look of dismay. One portrait of the parents looked as if it had been taken by a high-street photographer. Probably for an anniversary. They were wearing their best clothes. The colours were almost garish. Frieda smiled and then her smile froze. She looked more closely at the picture. She muttered something to herself, a sort of reminder.
Hansel accompanied her to the door and watched her leave with his golden, unblinking eyes.
‘Why the fucking fuck did you leave him?’
‘I didn’t say I’d left him. I said it was over.’
‘Oh, come on, Frieda.’ Olivia was striding around her living room, stumbling in her heels, trampling over clothes and objects, a very full glass of red wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The wine kept slopping over the rim of the glass and spreading small drops in her wake and the cigarette’s ash grew longer until it, too, scattered to the floor, to be ground into the grubby carpet by Olivia’s emphatic heel. She was wearing a gold, glittery cardigan, too tight for her and stretched open across her breasts, a pair of blue jogging pants with a stripe down the legs, and summer sandals with stiletto heels. Frieda wondered if she was having a slow, garrulous nervous breakdown. Sometimes it seemed that half the people around her were in states of collapse. ‘He wouldn’t have left you in a million years,’ Olivia was saying. ‘So why?’
Frieda didn’t really want to talk about Sandy. She certainly didn’t want to talk about him to Olivia. It turned out she wouldn’t be given a chance to anyway.
‘Number one, he’s a hunk. God, if you saw some of the men I’ve been dating recently – I don’t know how they have the nerve to pass themselves off as “attractive male”. I see them walking through the door and my heart sinks. They want some gorgeous blonde woman but they don’t seem to think they need to make an effort themselves. How desperate do they think we are? I’d jump at someone like Sandy.’
‘You never actually met him…’
‘And why not? Where was I? Yes. Number two, he’s rich. Well, he must be quite rich – he’s a consultant something-or-other, isn’t he? Think of his pension. Don’t look at me like that. It matters. I can tell you it bloody fucking matters. It’s hard being a woman alone, let me tell you, and you’ve got no safety net, have you, with your bloody family writing you out of their wills? God, I hope you knew that – I haven’t just let the cat out of the bag, have I?’
‘It’s not a great surprise,’ said Frieda, wryly. ‘But I don’t want their money – and anyway I don’t think they’ve got any to leave, have they?’
‘Well, that’s OK, then. Where was I?’
‘Number two,’ said Frieda. ‘You probably don’t want to go any higher than two, do you?’
‘Yeah, rich. I’d marry him just for that. Anything to get out of this dump.’ She kicked viciously at a wine bottle that was on its side by the sofa and it rolled away, dribbling red from its mouth. ‘Number three, I bet he loves you, so that should be three and four and five, because it’s a rare thing to be loved.’ She stopped abruptly and flung herself into the sofa. Some of the wine left in her glass flew out in a violent daub of crimson onto her lap. ‘Number four – or should that be six? – he’s nice. Isn’t he? Maybe he isn’t, because I seem to remember that you have a thing for scary men. OK, OK, I didn’t mean that, strike it. Number seven -’
‘Stop it. This is demeaning.’
‘Demeaning? I’ll show you demeaning.’ She gestured round the room. Ash swirled in a powdery arc round her. ‘Number five or ten or whatever, you’re not getting any younger.’
‘Olivia. Shut up, do you hear me? You’ve gone too far and if you go on I’m going to leave. I came round here to teach Chloe some chemistry.’
‘Which Chloe hasn’t turned up for so you’re stuck with me until she arrives, which may be never. You’ll soon be too old to have children, you know, though from where I’m sitting maybe that’s a lucky escape. Have you thought about that? All right, all right – you can give me that look of yours to freeze the blood, but I’ve had two, no, three glasses of wine now’ – and she took a last dramatic gulp from her glass – ‘and you can’t intimidate me. I’m insulated. I can say what I please in my own house, and I think you’re a bloody fool, Dr Frieda Klein-with-lots- of-letters-after-your-name. There, now I’ve had three glasses. Maybe it was four. I think it must have been. You should drink more, you know. You might be clever, but you’re tremendously stupid as well. Maybe it runs in the Klein blood. What did Freud say? I’ll tell you what he said. He said, “What do women want?” And do you know how he answered that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll tell you how. He said, “They want love and work.” ’
‘No. He more or less concluded that they want to be men. He said girls have to come to terms with being failed boys.’
‘Wanker. Anyway – where was I?’
‘What’s that noise?’
Olivia went out of the room, shrieked, and returned glassy-eyed. ‘That noise,’ she said, ‘is Chloe throwing up on the mat in the hall.’
Chapter Twenty-one
As Frieda was paying the cab driver, she saw Josef standing in her doorway.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘You don’t have a standing invitation, you know. You can’t just turn up whenever you feel like company.’
As if in explanation, he held up a bottle. ‘It is good vodka,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’
Frieda unlocked the door. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘I just waited. I thought maybe you come back.’
‘I’m not going to sleep with you. I’ve had a fucking awful day.’
‘No sleeping.’ Josef looked reproachful. ‘Just a drink.’
‘I could do with a drink,’ said Frieda.
While Josef lit the fire in the grate, Frieda rummaged in the back of a cupboard and found a packet of crisps. She emptied them into a bowl. She brought it through with two small glasses. The fire was already crackling. As she came into the room, she saw Josef before he knew she was back. He was staring into the flames with a different expression from the smile he’d greeted her with.
‘Are you sad, Josef?’
He looked round. ‘Far away,’ he said.
‘Why don’t you go home?’
‘Next year, maybe.’
Frieda sat down. ‘Do we need juice with this?’
‘Good on its own,’ he said. ‘For the taste.’
He unscrewed the top and delicately filled the two glasses to within a couple of millimetres of the rim. He handed one to Frieda. ‘Drink the first one all at once,’ he said.
‘I think I’d like that.’
They both tossed the drink back. Josef gave a slow grin. Frieda picked up the bottle and looked at the label.
